Conventionally, there are proposed a wide variety of driving apparatuses each of which is provided in a vehicle, has a motor and an inverter integrated therein, and includes a cooling mechanism capable of cooling the motor and the inverter.
For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-20881 describes a driving apparatus having a cooling space provided in its portion at which a driving apparatus case containing a motor and a heat sink integrated in an inverter are opposite to each other.
The cooling space is divided by a separating wall into an inverter side cooling space that faces the heat sink, and a driving case side cooling space that faces the driving apparatus case. The driving apparatus includes flow-in amount adjusting means for adjusting a coolant flow-in ratio.
A coolant circulation path, which circulates cooling water as single coolant through the cooling space, includes a water pump, a radiator, and the like. The water pump has a discharge side flow path serving as a starting point of the coolant circulation path and connected to an entrance side port of the heat sink.
In the driving apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-20881, the port to which the discharge side flow path of the water pump is connected protrudes upward, so the discharge side flow path projects in a space above the driving apparatus. Hence, the conventional driving apparatus suffers from a drawback that when the driving apparatus is mounted in a vehicle and connected to a pipe path of a cooling circuit, the driving apparatus and the cooling circuit occupy a large space, resulting in difficulties in mounting.